


Period Cramps are Worse than the Apocalypse

by ToSeeAMarchingBand



Series: Umbrella Academy Shithole [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Fight me on that, Gen, Grace is the best mom, I just needed more trans five, I love him, I treat Luther like garbage because he treated Vanya like garbage, Klaus is a good bro, Let Number Five | The Boy say fuck, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Periods, The teen rating is because five says fuck, This is more for my mental health then anything else, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Number Five, Warning: Oddesy reference, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 01:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18084650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToSeeAMarchingBand/pseuds/ToSeeAMarchingBand
Summary: After pushing it to the side for too long, Five deals with something he didn't want to think about.He'd prefer the apocalypse





	Period Cramps are Worse than the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> For any of you confused youngins who've read this before, I gave it some major editing! Yay

He was having a bit of a problem. One that, under normal circumstances, he would have solved by drinking away, like he normally does. But lucky for him, Klaus (Ben, more likely) decided that to become completely, 100%, indisputably sober, he needed to throw away every last drop of alcohol in the house. Even the rubbing alcohol. Diego was in for a bit of a surprise when he went to clean off a nasty scrape to find all of the solution MIA.

Back to Five. He wouldn’t have hesitated to just go and buy more booze, but he was stopped by two big-ass roadblocks. The first being the obvious, he was trapped in a thirteen-year old’s body and would never be able to purchase any alcohol from an able bodied adult. The second problem was probably the worst thing that could have possibly have happened during the week before the apocalypse. Five’s period came back. 

When he had first jumped to the future, and saw the entire Earth in shambles after the Moon fucking crashed into it, he had said to himself, “oh well this is clearly Hell on Earth, not a single doubt about it,”. Not a month after the thought was embedded in his mind did he look down one day to see his skirt covered in blood. His initial thought was “holy shit what stabbed me”¸ closely followed by the realization of why his panties were soaked, which was immediately followed by “Oh. I was wrong. THIS is Hell on Earth”

So Five lay in a fetal position on his bed, his knees pressed all the way up to his abdomen in an attempt to put enough pressure on the Uterus that it exploded and never bothered him again.

It didn’t work.

So yeah. No booze for Five, just tears and pain.

A knock came fromhis doorway, and instead of his usual cheery greeting, most often along the lines of “get the hell away from my door,” Five grunted a response, hoping the message would be sent across the wooden barrier that no, he does not want any visitors right now.

No such luck. Allison walked in after only a moment of waiting, and actually had the audacity to laugh at the sight of the teen/fifty-eight-year-old. As if she hadn’t been having the same problem two weeks ago.  
“Ouch. How’re you holding up?”

“I feel like one of Odysseus’s men in the unforgiving jaws of Polyphemus, his teeth ripping my body to shreds,” Five said almost incomprehensibly, his face smashed into the pillow.

“Sounds about right. Want any chocolate? Pads or tampons?” She asked, smiling with her sweet little Allison smile that everyone (especially Luther (ugh)) seemed to adore. Had Five been able to see her, he would have sent the most intense glare in her direction, one only a 58-year-old assassin who’s seen way too much could ever hope to achieve.

“I crave death,”

“You want a side of fries with that?”

Five held up his middle finger in response to that, with surprising dexterity for someone who’s body is feeling the equivalent pain of someone who’s just gone through a meat grinder. 

Allison left soon after, not before dropping off some Advil (Five will have to thank her later when he’s in the mood to open his eyes), and thus leaving him alone to deal with his problem. Not his sobriety, not his period, but the fact that he's got to come out and he has absolutely no idea how. 

Sweet Allison had just left Five’s room, still oblivious to the fact that Five was not, in fact, a girl, like she had thought her whole thirty years. Because Five still couldn’t muster the courage to tell anyone. He could murder a man without even a second thought, but telling his family his deepest secret? No thank you.

Believe him, he had read all of the articles online about it, but none of them mentioned the ever present looming threat of the world ending in less than a week.

Five decided to put it on the backburner, and think about it again later. He’s got calculations to do.

 

The apocalypse was easily averted. Honestly, who would have thought that going to catch up with Vanya (he was hormonal and missed his sister, get over it), seeing her powers, and then taking Van back to the academy to let everyone see how cool she was would somehow alter the course of time so much that the destruction of the world was stopped. Certainly not Five. It didn’t even cross his mind.

What did cross his mind, however, was the fact that he promised himself that he would deal with his entire gender identity issue after the apocalypse was stopped. If you wanted the truth, he only thought about doing that because he had pretty much given up hope at that point, and assumed that everyone would die in a fiery explosion of death and destruction. No such luck.

Now that he had a moment to sit still and gather his thoughts, to truly process everything rushing through his brain, he almost passed out. He hadn’t experienced dysphoria this strong since the middle of his life in the apocalypse. 

When Five had been hired by The Commission, it had become very apparent very quickly that breathing in all the smoke, toxins, and all the different chemicals he found along the way, all mixed in with the direct rays of the sun from the Ozone layer being ripped to shreds by moon shards, had disastrous side effects. Such as, lung cancer, skin cancer, and breast cancer. All resulting in skin grafts, lots of surgeries, and, in the end, no more boobs.

His 13-year-old body, however, did still have the long hair, breasts, and skirt from the uniform he had no choice but to put on, no other clothes in the house.

Looking down at himself, every feeling he’d ever had about the disdain, even hate towards his body slammed into him all at once like a tidal wave. All of the shaky tears in front of the mirror because he never felt right, the times when he would hesitantly slip on Klaus’s shorts in favor of their skirt and feel exponentially better, the endless worry in their heart because he didn’t know what was WRONG with himself, until he read the word in a book one fateful day.

« trans·gen·der  
/transˈjendər,tranzˈjendər/

adjective  
denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.”

 

Five quickly ran upstairs in a panic, causing himself to sprint instead of spatial jumping, nearly tripping over himself to get to his bedroom. He slammed his door open, breathing heavy, and each rise and fall of his chest in the mirror sent another shudder through him. He stripped from the skirt, jumped to Ben’s old room, grabbed a pair of shorts, jumped back, pulled them on hastily, and cried.  
“MOM!” He shouted, tears welling up in his eyes. He could hear footsteps near his door, ones that he didn’t recognize as Grace’s, and quickly locked the door.

“Number Five? What’s wrong girly?” Luther said loudly from the other side of his door, knocking on the wood many startling times. The nickname rang through his head like feedback from a microphone and he flinched backwards, now curled up on the ground, the tears falling freely. 

“Excuse me Luther, if I may get in please,” Grace said sweetly, though Five could barely hear it over his heart pounding in his head. He had had his fair share of panic attacks, but a dysphoria induced one is the worst by far.

Grace knocked, momentarily bringing him out of his daze, long enough for him to shakily unlock the door and open it, allowing his mom and only his mom inside the room. Luther tried, but there was nothing stopping Five now. He took a shuddering breath, wiped the tears from his eyes (they came back moments later but that’s not important), and attempted to slam the door on Luther’s foot. 

The man eventually got it through his thick skull that he wasn’t wanted at the moment, and withdrew, walking away.

Five dropped to his knees and sobbed, while Grace bent down and embraced him in a tight hug. 

“It’s ok Five, tell me what’s bothering you, and then we can begin fixing it,” she said now petting his hair (long long LONG LONG HAIR) with her left, her right still wrapped around him.

“I want it off mom please get it off!” he shouted, his hands pulling down on his hair in an attempt to rip it all out. She gently lifted his hands away from his locks and smiled down at him.

“You want a haircut?” All he could do was nod. “would you like it in a bob or- “ he violently shook his head. “-no bob, so short then? Like the boys when they were young?” She asked, and after a moment of hesitation, of looking up at his mother who had a gleam of knowingness in her eyes, he nodded.

 

Ten minutes later, Five emerged from the bathroom with a new haircut, shorts, and a small smile on his face. He turned towards the inside where Grace was sweeping up the hair on the ground, his eyes red and puffy.

“Thanks mom,” he said quietly. She smiled.

“Of course, sweetie, you’re my son,” 

Five slept better than he had in years that night.

 

Unfortunately for him, he still had a major problem on his chest that desperately needed to be solved. And no, he wasn’t being metaphorical and talking about how he needed to come out to the rest of the family (he still did but he thought he’d save that treat for later), he was talking about his boobs. Once again tragedy struck, and Five remembered that he’s thirteen, and couldn’t get top surgery if he tried, and honestly had no idea where he would find a binder. 

So he asked someone he knew would know, even though he was scared to death of doing it. 

“What do ya need lil- ooohhh I love what you’ve done with your hair, and your new look, with the shorts, and the boy’s cut, and-“ Klaus cut himself off midsentence, something nobody ever thought would happen, and gave Five a /look/. “Is what I think is going on here going on here?” He asked, his eyes softening a tad.

“Well that’s entirely dependent on how sober you are right now,”

“100% baby bro,” he smiled, ushering Five into the room without a second thought. 

The man gently pushed the teen onto his bed, and sat down on the floor in front of him.

“So how long has this been going on?”

“Ages,”

“Yikes. You look in need of something,” Five rolled his eyes.

“Tell me about it,” he sighed, rubbing his face. Had he come this far, only to be stopped by his brother’s lolly gagging? He would have asked Grace for a binder, but she most likely would have shown up with a 3-ring one filled with paper.

“You’re in luck, I know a guy,” Five wearily opened his eyes.

“Are we on the same page here? I’m not looking for drugs,” he said, and Klaus laughed. Maybe he could have asked Pogo. He was a monkey, but surely he would have been better help than this. 

“Don’t be ridiculous bro bro, this is a serious issue, and is being handled with upmost care. I’ll text Speedy that you’re in a bind- ha, that was unintentional, and then everything will be sorted out in a jiffy. What’s the circumference of your chest?”

“I- I don’t know?”

“Wow it’s like you’re not even prepared for this,”

“I wasn’t. How did you even know what I wanted, what- what I am?” Five was horrified at his lack of basic communication skill, but the stutter stayed. He finally understands how Diego felt. The nerves are really getting to him.

“I could see that deep personal pain in your eyes, bro, it hurt to look at. I could see the telltale signs the moment you showed up at my door. Also you told me last week when you were drunk because you were sad you left Delores,” He teared up a bit thinking about her, but shook it off to continue his conversation.

“Who else was there?” he asked, horror rising in his voice.

“Just me,” Klaus reassured, patting the boy’s foot. “Now skedaddle, I’ll text you when Speedy arrives later, he’s bringing a few binders that usually fit people your age,”

“58?”

“13 dipshit,”

 

The first binder was way too tight, as Five couldn’t even get in on. The second was too loose, and didn’t properly bind his chest.

The third was just right.

“Thanks Klaus,” He said, sliding his jacket on over his shoulders, the shoulders that were connected to his FLAT CHEST!

“No problem, little bro, just doing what any good older sibling would do,”

“I’m OLDER THAN YOU!” Five argued, a small smile plaguing his face.

“Whatever you say squirt,” the taller man said, rubbing the teen’s hair.

 

“I’ve got something to get off my chest,” he said to the family later that evening, breaking the silence in the living room.

“Yeah you do, it looks uncomfortable, what is that?” Allison asked, turning towards the teen. He rolled his eyes.

“Figuratively. The binder stays on,” A few questions were heard like “what binder, where?” and “why are you wearing a three ring binder on your chest?”. Honestly his siblings are complete and total buffoons sometimes.

He waited for them to finish speaking before finishing his announcement. “I’m transgender. My name is Five, use he/him pronouns,” he said, exactly like he and Klaus had rehearsed. From on the sofa he saw his brother and Grace both giving him thumbs ups.

“But, you’re so young, how do you know?”

“I’m 58 Luther, shut the fuck up,”

Five was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope it was good, it was the fist fic I've written in a while so I'm a bit rusty. Also it's like 1 AM so there's that too


End file.
